Sport-utility vehicles are practical and popular; convertibles are fun. So why not combine the two? It sounds like a brilliant idea but, aside from true off-roaders like the Jeep Wrangler, the concept has rarely been successful. Nissan’s Murano CrossCabriolet was laughed out of showrooms; more recently, Land Rover decided to add a convertible version of the Range Rover Evoque, which mostly served to reveal that a fixed roof is central to that model’s previously unquestioned design acumen. The idea also was explored by engineering house and contractor Karmann back in 2005 with the unfortunately named SUC concept (its name stands for Sport Utility Cabriolet).

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Now Volkswagen is picking up the baton, announcing it will build a convertible version of its Europe-market T-Roc compact SUV.

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Based on the Golf, the T-Roc plays a major role in the company’s future-product strategy. Volkswagen, after all, is “developing into an SUV brand,” according to brand chief Herbert Diess. And indeed, launching a T-Roc cabriolet means there won’t be a Golf cabriolet again.

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The sketch supplied by VW reveals that the T-Roc cabriolet will be a two-door with a short tail, will feature a fabric top, and will have metal-covered or at least metal-colored A-pillars, much like the Audi A5 cabriolet.

Interestingly, it will be assembled alongside the first-gen Tiguan and the Porsche Cayman in VW’s Osnabrück, Germany, plant. That’s the former Karmann factory, which VW took over after Karmann folded in 2010. Thus, the T-Roc cabriolet could be considered the spiritual successor of the Karmann-assembled Golf cabrio, not to mention the Karmann Ghia and of course, the SUC.

Chevrolet didn’t trademark the name “Suburban” when it introduced the industry’s first steel-bodied, eight-passenger truck-based wagon back in 1935. Other marques subsequently used the term, and it didn’t officially become General Motors’ until 10 years after Plymouth discontinued its Suburban station wagon in 1978. Now, 83 years on, the Suburban is the longest-running nameplate in automotive history and is attached to the go-to hauler for people with big families and big needs. With a new Chevy Silverado just unveiled, a 12th-generation Suburban is imminent.

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Chevrolet first applied the name to a $675 (about $12,000 in 2017 dollars) depot hack, a basic truck used to ferry passengers and luggage to and from train stations and ship terminals. A heater and rear bumper were notable options, but the innovation came in using steel rather than wood for the body, which now boasted an enclosed cabin. As amenities increased, mainstream buyers followed. The Suburban now starts above $50,000, and Americans bought nearly 60,000 last year.

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The Suburban’s entrenchment is a product of many factors. It has long been one of GM’s best-executed vehicles, delivering on its promise to cart many people and their possessions reliably wherever they might need to go in above-average comfort. It adapts to a rutted two-track as easily as it does an eight-lane expressway, uniting the oft-conflicting desires of rural and city denizens into one quintessentially American vehicle. And make no mistake, its Americanness—big, brash, potent, and pragmatic—is a large part of its appeal to patriotic owners no matter where they might fall on the political spectrum.

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Suburban sales are strong across the country. Missourians bought the most last year, with Texas and California neck and neck for second- and third-place sales. This bucks the trend of many domestic products, which seemingly vanish from the roads outside of flyover country. Certainly many buyers are merely running the numbers on offspring and tow ratings and arriving at the Suburban as the most logical conclusion.

But there’s more: The Suburban and its smaller Tahoe sibling boast some of the industry’s highest loyalty figures—more than 75 percent of buyers who stay in the segment buy another one, according to General Motors.

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Sandor Piszar, Chevrolet’s marketing director of full-size trucks and SUVs, tells how, at a recent event celebrating Chevy trucks’ centennial, the emcee asked, “How many people have named their trucks?” Almost all hands shot up. He then asked, “How many people have named their smartphones?” Big laughs ensued.

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“It’s a funny question, but it really is an intriguing point,” Piszar says. “People name what they love. And they love their Suburbans.”

Freestyle skier and ski racer Jon Olsson’s history with Audi wagons is a story of ups and downs. A few years ago, he had an Audi RS6 Avant built into a camo-covered DTM-racer-style beast, complete with a carbon-fiber wide-body kit, aero flicks, a massive chin splitter, and a roof-mounted carbon cargo box. It was equal parts gorgeous and menacing, and Olsson was rightfully quite proud of the car. He ended up selling that RS6, however, and it was subsequently stolen and burned to the ground. It makes sense, then, that his newest build is called Project Phoenix, another RS6 Avant with even more power and an entirely new look.

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Well, the look isn’t completely new. It still features a camouflage wrap—a trademark of Olsson’s multiple supercar builds—albeit with a twist: One half is white camo, while the other is black. A red stripe separates each side. In addition to more red accents and a few brand logos, each side has graphics that mix gloss and matte portions that play with light to make the car look different from various viewing angles. The Olsson RS6 also debuts a new prototype aero wheel from build partner ABT; the wheels provide more contrast as they’re rendered in white and black up front and red and black at the rear.

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ABT also helped boost the car’s performance. The company, which recently released the ferocious RS5-R, based Olsson’s ride on the RS6+, a limited-edition beefed-up version that starts with Audi’s own RS6 Performance. Project Phoenix has 725 horsepower and 679 lb-ft of torque, healthy bumps over the RS6 Performance’s 597 horsepower and 516 lb-ft of torque.

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A custom exhaust finished with carbon-fiber tips ensures that the engine’s might is obvious; the system was assembled by hand and sounds absolutely demonic. Check out the 1:50 or 5:00 marks in the video embedded below to hear this thing bark.

In Olsson’s video, his reinvigorated appreciation for the versatility of the RS6 is apparent. “You have four-wheel drive, you can put everything in the back, four seats,” he says during his ride-along in the video. “No other reason to have anything else. I have no idea why I sold the old RS6.” He clearly has the wagon love, and so do we.

A lot of tech believers—and some automakers—point to a future of the automobile that’s autonomous, connected, shared, and electric. But the time frame for the envisioned wholesale transformation from today’s reality to the next era of mobility is up for debate. In guessing just when these changes might happen, and how rapidly, traditional automakers face some tough (and expensive) decisions with make-or-break consequences. Do they spend billions now on the development of new platforms and assembly plants to mass-produce electric vehicles, or will internal combustion still reign for decades to come? Do they go big on research and development of automated driving systems for tomorrow’s production vehicles, or are such technologies going to be in test mode for the foreseeable future? Do they invest in the development of cleaner and more efficient internal-combustion technology, or is electric really approaching the tipping point?

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These uncertainties are underscored in a new research paper from the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), which looks at some of the complexities that can make today’s market successes seem to be in conflict with what’s suggested by the much hyped mobility sector and some market projections for electric vehicles. The paper suggests a more pragmatic—some would say pessimistic— view about how quickly some new vehicle technologies will be adopted in the marketplace.

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The paper wasn’t commissioned by a particular automaker or group of industry companies; it was funded by CAR’s independent research-and-development budget, which comes from corporate and industry sources plus state, federal, and local governments.

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Think Globally?

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Right now, automakers are recording near record profits from sales of high-margin vehicles such as full-size (nonhybrid) SUVs and pickups. They get higher profits in general for trucks and crossovers than they do for passenger cars. On the other hand, there’s globalization and the ever increasing regulatory mandates for electric vehicles (in California, but in also in countries such as China and France). Add new EV sales targets in Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, South Korea, and Spain, and widespread calls for the banishment of internal combustion on timelines as soon as 2030. The global current pushing EVs, at this point, looks close to unstoppable.

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Most major automakers and many suppliers are hoping to amortize their investments in new powertrain and driving technologies over millions of units at a global scale. But most current forecasts say that the investment required to develop electric vehicles and connected platforms won’t be returned on the 10-year amortization horizon that’s customary in the industry. Not all automakers see this as a major issue: General Motors, for instance, just this past year underscored that it foresees electric vehicles becoming profitable in the very near term, by 2021. Others are investing so heavily in electrification that their profitability looks to be in question if the changeover isn’t rapid. Between 2009 and 2017, automakers invested a relatively small amount, $9.8 billion, on electrified-vehicle technologies. Looking forward, however, investments totaling about $90 billion have been announced toward the development of electrics, a large portion of which is to be spent in China.

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The CAR study backs one of the more conservative predictions (from LMC Automotive) about consumer adoption of battery-electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel-cell models: It forecasts that such cars will make up less than 3 percent of the powertrain mix in North America in 2024 and just 8 percent of the market by 2030. The remainder of new vehicles will have an internal-combustion engine on board, it says.

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However, many analysts are taking a different tack on projections for EV adoption, prioritizing the rapid evolution of battery technology even if the next decade is one with sustained cheap gasoline prices. For instance, London’s Fitch Ratings, one of the world’s most respected credit-rating agencies, issued a report this week anticipating that oil demand could peak by 2030 because of rising EV sales. “This is not our core scenario, but developments in 2017 show how technological changes and greater product awareness could lead to annual sales of 10 million battery-powered EVs by 2025,” the report authors emphasized. It could be that the North American market for EVs remains disproportionately small compared to their adoption elsewhere in the world, such that both these forecasts are supportable. Still, even the optimistic figure of 10 million units suggests that a large majority of new vehicles sold will still rely on internal combustion more than a decade into the future.

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Selling Change to a Conservative Market

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Anticipate some behavioral hiccups along the way: There’s a well-established gap between what consumers tell researchers that they intend to buy and what they actually do buy. Whether due to pricing, charging infrastructure, driving range, or issues at the dealership, it’s a gap that persists in the United States; according to a 2018 Deloitte study, if shoppers actually bought what they intended, fully electric and gasoline-electric hybrid models together already would claim nearly a fifth of the U.S. vehicle market. The reality is that fully electric cars, plug-in hybrids, and hybrids combined summed to just over 3 percent of the market, with that mix heavily tilted, still, toward hybrids that depend heavily on the internal-combustion element in their drivetrains.

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The CAR study also takes a conservative tack on the adoption of autonomous technologies, looking to IHS Markit projections anticipating that the serious growth for the autonomous-vehicle sector won’t happen until the 2030s. It sees the Level 4 and Level 5 autonomous-vehicle market—vehicles that require no driver input or oversight under at least some conditions—to be just 3.8 percent of the market in 2030, rising quickly to 54.9 percent in 2040.

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Even so, it could take much longer for these new automated-driving technologies to spread into a meaningful portion of the national fleet. Given the number of passenger vehicles on the road and today’s sales rate, it takes about seven years for a new technology’s penetration to reach half of the vehicles in use on the road (in miles traveled)—and that assumes that 100 percent of the vehicles sold at the start of that seven-year period have it. This is usually the case only if government mandates use of the technology, as it did with, say, stability control or tire-pressure monitoring.

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Urban dwellers may be the most eager to ditch the burdens of car ownership, but when you’re talking about deploying mobility services or EV charging stations, rural travel represents a disproportionately large and expensive challenge. And, to the sheer financial strain of mounting such a campaign, add uncertainty about the economy: “A prolonged market slump or a steep market correction could delay the full implementation of EVs and AVs by as long as five to 10 years,” the authors summarized.

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Easing Standards Could Compound Challenges in the U.S.–

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Standards for carbon-dioxide emissions and federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) are currently being evaluated as part of a midterm review. It’s suspected that the federal government will either freeze the mileage requirements in 2021 or at least ease the annual tightening that’s now scheduled from 2021 to 2025.

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The CAR study’s authors note that such a relaxation of regulatory demands would give consumers vehicles they want and that manufacturers would profit. However, they caution, such a scenario “will create a fragmented U.S. market,” as 10 states (representing nearly half of the U.S. new-car market) will continue to follow California’s ZEV mandate.

Pushing hard to sell highly profitable trucks may be the way to keep flush now, but some of the money earned needs to be funneled toward investments in the EV and autonomous futures, the research paper’s authors underscore. As EV and automation technology get closer to their tipping points, “Automakers and suppliers will develop these technologies for—and in—those markets and countries where consumers demand them, and where infrastructure, incentives, and regulatory mandates are aligned,” they note. The investments to enable a future of electric, autonomous, and shared-mobility transportation demands a lot of meaningful R&D investment. And automakers seeking money for those investments are, ironically, most likely to find it by selling lots of internal-combustion engines in vehicles that people drive themselves.

At the 2017 SEMA show, Mopar released the Hellcat engine into the wild, so to speak, announcing that it would sell crate ’cats to anyone with 15 grand and a skateboard large enough to strap it to. Also at SEMA, the Ringbrothers of Spring Green, Wisconsin, showed a car that could serve as the veritable model for Mopar’s new adopt-a-Hellcat program: a 1972 AMC Javelin AMX called “Defiant,” built for antifreeze giant Prestone. It’s powered by a Hellcat Hemi tuned by Wegner Motorsports to an utterly feral 1036 horsepower. The car looked amazing up on the stand, but we all know that cars like this always look (and sound) better on the street, so when we were offered a quick spin in the beast at Point Dume, in Malibu, California, we said, “Hell, yes.”

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Based on a 1972 AMC Javelin AMX that is said to have been trolling the Rings’ hometown for decades, Defiant is described by its builders as “arguably the wildest custom vehicle ever crafted” by the Ringbrothers team. Not only does it host a Hellcat with four-figure output under its carbon-fiber power-dome-on-a-power-dome hood, but the Ringbrothers have gone to extraordinary lengths to perfect the Javelin’s styling and stance.

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If Defiant doesn’t look quite like Javelins you remember, that’s no accident: Ringbrothers moved the front axle forward a full 6.5 inches, then crafted all-new front bodywork out of carbon fiber, complete with the Javelin’s distinct front fender humps in their relocated position. Another difference involves the wheel arches, which on standard Javelins were tucked beneath the horizontal character line in the body’s midsection; all four have been enlarged considerably to contain Defiant’s huge 20-inch wheels, which are a full 11 inches wide in front and 13 inches across at the rear. So the arches now reach above the midsection character line and are finished with a delicate, natural-looking lip. Meanwhile, the bumpers, taillamp trim, and numerous engine-bay components are veritable works of art, milled in house from solid blocks of aluminum. With respect to any Javelin purists who may be out there, the Ringbrothers’ modifications have markedly improved, if not corrected, the Javelin’s most awkward design aspects, virtually eradicating the beaky front overhang and widening its elephant-in-ballet-slippers stance into something more akin to a modern muscle-car posture.

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Beneath the skin is a mechanical melange of muscle-car machinery, including a front subframe originally designed for a Chevrolet Camaro by Detroit Speed, which also provided the rack-and-pinion steering. RideTech shocks, sway bars, and side exhausts were also installed, as was a completely custom four-link rear suspension by Ringbrothers. A Chevy 4L80E automatic transmission and a carbon-fiber driveshaft were tasked with delivering the wrath of the goosed Hellcat motor to the 12-bolt rear end (also Chevy sourced), where a pair of 335/30R-20 Michelin tires are pretty much doomed to short lives.

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We arrived about an hour before sunset, when the sky set the Jalop Gold paint aglow. It’s quite the color, and thankfully there’s enough matte black on the roof and hood to keep it from being overwhelming. Stepping up for closer inspection revealed details one might not notice from afar, such as a notch in the leading edge of the carbon-fiber hood, the sexy door pulls, the beefy hood anchor pins, anything and everything in the engine bay, and those exquisite taillamps! This car really is spectacular.

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Then there’s the rumbling idle, which gives way to a riotous wail on acceleration that you can feel as it passes by as if it were a stampede of 1036 actual horses.

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For our drive, we were allotted a 12-mile maximum. Alas, 12 feet was sufficient to scare us sideways (literally) after we depressed the gas pedal perhaps a fraction of an inch too far on entering the busy Pacific Coast Highway. The spectacularly loud but heavenly exhaust note did nothing to calm our nerves as we tried to make friends with this steroidal beast before a twitch or a sneeze might send us spinning. Even at highway speeds, the rear end would hop around without much provocation—with the feather-light gas pedal not helping matters, particularly for unfamiliar drivers. The fearsome jumpiness resembled one’s first experience of a Dodge Viper in the rain, only this car is much heavier and nearly twice as powerful. In the event something goes awry, the only protection is a 1972-period-correct lap belt.

Clearly, it would take more than 12 miles to learn this beast’s wiles. With that radiant paint and thunderous exhaust tipping off any constabulary within five miles that something Defiant their way comes, we decided to save the tires and our driver’s licenses for future use and chilled for the balance of our drive. This gave us time to appreciate the low-backed white leather chairs, the surprisingly amenable ride quality, and the light, precise steering. The car tracked nice and straight as long as we remained judicious with the throttle, and the six-piston brakes at each wheel slowed the car elegantly as we approached stop signs and traffic lights, where we enjoyed considerable deference from fellow motorists, who often waved us by, either to get a better look at the car or out of utter fear. As we crept through a posh Malibu neighborhood on our return to Point Dume, involuntarily setting off car alarms and scuttling flocks of birds from the trees overhead, all we could think was how much we hoped that all wayward Hellcats might find homes as epic as this.

What It Is: Volkswagen’s entrant in the fiercely competitive mid-size-sedan segment. A 174-hp turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-four pairs with a six-speed automatic transmission and comes standard in the S, R-Line, SE, and SEL Premium trim levels of the 2018 Passat. Those in search of more power can opt for the available 280-hp 3.6-liter V-6 in the SEL Premium trim or check the box for the V-6-only Passat GT, which is new for 2018. READ MORE ››